"More nonsense from Roger Harrabin:
A rapid climate shift under way in the Barents Sea could spread to other Arctic regions, scientists warn.
The Barents Sea is said to be at a tipping point, changing from an Arctic climate to an Atlantic climate as the water gets warmer.
A conference in Norway heard that the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea – both further to the east – are likely to become the new Arctic frontier.
The scientists warn that it will affect ecosystems.
It may also impact on global weather patterns, although there’s no agreement on that.
They’re concerned because the north Barents Sea has been governed by an Arctic climate since the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago.
The Arctic Ocean has a cold, fresh surface layer which acts as a cap on a layer of warm, saltier Atlantic water beneath.
But now in the Barents Sea there’s not enough freshwater-rich sea-ice flowing from the high Arctic to maintain the freshwater cap.
And that’s allowing warm, salty Atlantic water to rise to the surface.
In what’s known as a feedback loop – the more the layers mix, the warmer the surface gets. And the warmer the surface gets, the more the waters mix.
So it’s now only a matter of time, the researchers say, before this section of the Arctic effectively becomes part of the Atlantic. It could happen in as little as a decade, they warn….
And in another puzzle, freshwater in the western Arctic seems to be increasing as it diminishes in the eastern Arctic. Scientists are still struggling to fathom the complexities of human impact on the planet.
Why on earth should any of this have to do anything to do with “human impact on the planet”?
You only have to go back to the 1920s to see exactly the same climatic changes in that part of the Arctic.
This period, called the Warming in the North, is well known to scientists, and lasted from around 1920 to 1960..."
Read on.
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